Dear
Satyanad,
indeed, as you point out, the IAST
transliteration for Sanskrit and the standard Tamil
transliteration are not really compatible, e/ē and o/ō being
another case in point. Some Tamil transliteration schemes
solve the problem by transliterating long e and o as e/o (as
in IAST) and short e and o as ĕ/ŏ, but of course that is
completely illogical from the perspective of the Tamil
language. ISO 15919 has the big advantage of being
compatible with all Indic script and languages, but given
that IAST has long been accepted as the standard for
Sanskrit transliteration, I doubt whether Sanskritists would
be willing to adopt a different transliteration scheme.
Best wishes,
Jonas
____ _____
Dr. Jonas Buchholz
Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Project “Hindu Temple Legends in South India”
Karl Jaspers Centre
Voßstr. 2 | Building 4400 | Room 004
69115
Heidelberg, Germany
P:
+49 (0)6221 54 4095
E:
jonas.buchholz@hadw-bw.de
W:
https://www.hadw-bw.de/htl
That's one more reason to revise IAST since the letter you
mention (ḻ) is the now standard transliteration for
another letter, the Tamil
ழ் namely, the final letter of
Tamiḻ.
The French used to have a different system that mixes lower
and upper-case characters, but this system does not seem to be
very popular anymore.
IAST, as its name indicates, is adapted to Sanskrit only.
Another familiar issue is fact that e and o indicate long
letters in IAST and short ones in Tamil, and in other
languages that have these short letters.
From a practical viewpoint, it would be nice to have versions
in GRETIL and other repositories that are more inclusive, at
least Tamil-compatible, since manuscripts containing Tamil and
Sanskrit text together are plenty. S'aivism is an obvious
example. For mathematics, especially in the Madhava school
that produced extremely interesting results from the
fourteenth century onwards, Malayalam and Sanskrit may be used
concurrently, so that the same issue arises.
One should remember that in India, texts in several languages
are very common, and that the problem was solved by having a
different script for each language. Transliteration in such
cases fails to reproduce an essential element of manuscripts.
I remember a music composition that used four scripts.
We Indologists needs to be as inclusive as possible for
obvious reasons.
Satyanad Kichenassamy
Le 24/03/2023 à 14:18, Harry Spier a
écrit :
Looking at this page of wikipedia IAST
uses l underbar for retroflex l.
Dear Jonas (if I may),
IAST, as you say, is not satisfactory. ISO 15919 is
better in this regard, as it distinguishes ḷ and l̥.
IPA uses
l̩ for ऌ.
Best regards,
Satyanad Kichenassamy
Le 24/03/2023 à 09:13,
Buchholz, Jonas a écrit :
Dear Harry (if I may),
Retroflex l (ळ)
is quite common in South Indian
Sanskrit manuscripts and prints. For example,
in the Śaiva
Kāñcīmāhātmya (a Sanskrit
sthalamāhātmya on the city of Kanchipuram), I
find the following examples just in the first
two chapterts: śītal̤a, yugal̤a, uddhūl̤ita,
kāl̤ikā, vakul̤a, nāl̤ikera, dal̤a, niṣkal̤a,
sakal̤a, kramel̤aka, maul̤i…
Sanskrit loanwords in South
Indian languages also often reflect the
pronunciation with retroflex l, e.g. the
goddes Kālī is called காளி
Kāḷi (with retroflex l) in Tamil.
My impression is that there are
certain words in which l is quite consistently
replaced by retroflex l, while other words
retain then “normal” l. However, I have not
been able to find any consistent pattern when
l becomes retroflex – any insights would be
appreciated!
Another question is how retroflex
l should be represented in Roman
transliteration. The most straightforward
solution would be ḷ (in analogy with ṭ, ḍ, ṇ,
ṣ), which is also the character used for
retroflex l in Tamil transliteration, but in
IAST transliteration ḷ is already reserved for
vocalic l (ऌ). As you can see above, I have
tentatively been using l̤ for retroflex l, but
I would be happy to know if any other
conventions have been used.
Best wishes,
Jonas Buchholz
____ _____
Dr. Jonas Buchholz
Heidelberg Academy of Sciences
and Humanities
Project “Hindu Temple Legends in
South India”
Karl Jaspers Centre
Voßstr. 2 | Building 4400 | Room
004
69115
Heidelberg, Germany
P:
+49 (0)6221 54 4095
E:
jonas.buchholz@hadw-bw.de
W:
https://www.hadw-bw.de/htl
Von:
INDOLOGY
<indology-bounces@list.indology.info>
Im Auftrag von Harry Spier via
INDOLOGY
Gesendet: Freitag, 24. März 2023 02:10
An: indology@list.indology.info
Betreff: [INDOLOGY] ळ
in
south Indian grantha sanskrit manuscripts
Dear
list members,
I'm
looking at the devanagari transcription of a
south indian grantha manuscript. most
consonent l's are the classical sanskrit l
i.e. ल
but
some words have the letter, ळ .
Some
examples are:
प्रक्षाळ्य
नाळिकेरोद्भवं
पादौप्रक्षाळ्याचम्य
मुकुळीकृतिय
पिण्गळाय
वामांघ्र्यब्जदळासह्रिताम्
अण्गुळ्यग्रेण
शुद्धविद्यातत्वव्याप्तसर्वमणळोपेतं
I'm
pretty sure this isn't from typist
misprints because प्रक्षाळ्य
occcurs many
times always spelled with ळ
Any
explanations would be appreciated. My
understanding is that sometimes
manuscripts were created by one scribe
speaking the text and another scribe
writing what he hears. Is that a
possible explanation for the
occurance of this letter ळ . I.e. local
pronounciation creeping in.
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--
**********************************************
Satyanad KICHENASSAMY
Professor of Mathematics
Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Reims (CNRS, UMR9008)
Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
F-51687 Reims Cedex 2
France
Web: https://www.normalesup.org/~kichenassamy
**********************************************
_______________________________________________
INDOLOGY mailing list
INDOLOGY@list.indology.info
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--
**********************************************
Satyanad KICHENASSAMY
Professor of Mathematics
Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Reims (CNRS, UMR9008)
Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
F-51687 Reims Cedex 2
France
Web: https://www.normalesup.org/~kichenassamy
**********************************************